


and when that heart began to beat

by a_walking_shadow



Series: burning bright [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dr Nyarlathotep, Episode: s03e11 Utopia, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 18:54:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19179364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_walking_shadow/pseuds/a_walking_shadow
Summary: Yana is an echo but he's fine with that, mostly.He's not fine with that, once he realises just what he's an echoof.





	and when that heart began to beat

 

Yana had never felt fully whole. Or real. Or rather, he’d often felt like he’d been rather clumsily cobbled together out of whatever spare parts were around at the time, with the vague air of “oh, this’ll have to do”, and _hurry hurry hurry_ , and sometimes he thinks he might have been running before he even learned to think or feel.

This was, of course, absolute rubbish. He’d had parents, even if he couldn’t remember them, and they certainly wouldn’t have built him out of spare parts.

It was a feeling he tended to ignore, puttering around in his workshop and building a spaceship out of glorified spaghetti, desperate to run (although running won’t help, not this late, there’s nowhere left to go. Not for him, certainly, not at this age, and so much of the universe has burned ~~not burned, the opposite of burned, here, and only here. Spread itself too thin until even the most stubborn embers have run out of fuel and died, drifting listlessly and unable to pursue any further~~ so there isn’t anywhere for anyone else, either.)

He pities the young ones, that this barren wasteland is all they’ll ever know. (It’s all he’s ever known, although he likes to dream about other places, when those dreams don’t end in fire and smoke.) Unless he can get them away from here, in which case-

-the sky is made of diamonds, the children say, even though it isn’t, and he nods although he knows that the stars skip right past carbon on their way to dying iron. They’ll die too, out there- the children, that is. All of them, the void creeping ever closer, but it’ll be quick, hopefully, and they’ll have hope, and maybe that’s the most important thing he can give. Hope that there might just be a way out of this mess. He’s certainly given up on escaping for himself.

Well, mostly.

There’s a stubborn little spark in the back of his mind which refuses to die, even though he knows there’s nothing to do about it, and even though he knows that even if he lived, it would be at the cost of someone else. He calls it cowardice, late at night, as he rebuilds his engine again, yet another effort he knows will be futile. Chan-tho, bless her, calls it life.

He supposes she must experience the same thing, with every day she persists even in the absence of the rest of her species. Yana… he’s not sure he could do that, really. It would be so _lonely_.

 

* * *

 

TARDIS, time travel, TARDIS, time travel, TARDIS-

_What-_

Drums, a call to war, wartime, time war time war time war-

bangbangbangbang. bangbangbangbang. Bang bang bang BANG. Regeneration.

Time and time again-

_it’s stuck, it’s old.  it’s not meant to be- I don’t know._

_open me, you human fool_ bangbangbangbang _give your power to ME-_

* * *

 

The light burns. He’s scared. (Yana’s always scared but not of- oh, by the stars above. Not of himself. Not like this.)

The watch is open, and it looks- it looks just like it should, clockwork driven reliability, ticking away steadily, onetwothreefour-

He looks like he should, finally, understated clockwork and shifting gears and the cold bite of steel against your throat, perfectly controlled for all that the slightest nudge could send the entire system crashing out of control. None of this three-dimensional nonsense, he’s clanking cogs out over dimensions which haven’t seen anyone in-

Oh, hello, Doctor, how nice to see you there-

Well, other than him, and isn’t he nice and firey this time round, it’s been all of history or maybe no time at all since anyone explored these places, some of them collapsed completely without anyone to remind them of their place. He wanders across time too, ticking and tocking back and forth just a few seconds each way, then further and further. There’s so little left of the universe, now, and so few possibilities for how this can unfold that keeping track of them all is no effort whatsoever.

_Chan Professor Yana tho?_

Idly, he flicks his perception back to the nearest dozen or so dimensions to where the interruption has come from. Ah. Her.

For a moment, he considers keeping her. Timelines split, and he calculates the outcomes speculatively. She might be helpful, but- no. Far too moral, and the amusement caused by the Doctor’s confusion at the scenario won’t make up for the complications.

And besides, he’s been gone so very, very long. He needs a statement.

‘I am the Master’, he tells her, although he’s really saying it for the group on the other side of the door.

And then he kills her.

 


End file.
